"Georg Gartner - Hitler's Last Soldier"

[mahatmakanejeeves]

There's no anniversary here. I just ran across this on Wikipedia.

In was enjoying Hiawatha Pete's thread about the Grand Canyon Limited:

Santa Fe, All The Way! A Steam Train Sojourn on the "Grand Canyon Limited"

I wondered if his route took him over the site of the derailment caused by the Sons of the Gestapo. It did not. That derailment was eerily similar to an earlier case of railroad sabotage. I couldn't recall the location of the first derailment, but there was a link that took me to that. I next wanted to read up on the train involved in that earlier derailment, the City of San Francisco.

There I read about how it was trapped in a snowstorm in 1952 near the Donner Pass. Then I saw something about that incident that I had never heard before:

Incidents

The City of San Francisco derailed in Nevada in 1939. The incident was ruled an act of sabotage, but, despite years of investigation, remains unsolved.

A blizzard in the Sierra Nevada trapped the train for six days in January 1952, on Track #1 at Yuba Pass (39.3262°N 120.593°W), 17 miles (27 km) west of Donner Pass. Snow drifts from 100 mph (160 km/h) winds blocked the train, burying it in 12 feet of snow and stranding it from January 13 to 19. The event made international headlines.

During the effort to reach the train, the railroad's snow-clearing equipment and snow-blowing rotary plows became frozen to the tracks near Emigrant Gap. Hundreds of workers and volunteers, including escaped German POW Georg Gärtner, rescued stranded passengers by clearing nearby Route 40 to reach the train.

And here we are:

Georg Gärtner



Dennis Whiles at the age of 89 (Independence Day 2009)

Birth name: Georg Gärtner
Other name(s): Dennis F. Whiles
Born: December 18, 1920;Schweidnitz, Lower Silesia (now Świdnica, Poland)
Died: January 30, 2013 (aged 92); Loveland, Colorado, U.S.
Service/branch: Wehrmacht
Years of service: 1940–1943
Unit: Afrika Korps

Georg Gärtner (German pronunciation: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈɡɛʁtnɐ]; December 18, 1920 – January 30, 2013) was a German soldier of World War II who escaped from a prisoner of war camp in the United States, took on a new identity as Dennis F. Whiles, and was never recaptured, though he did reveal his true identity some 40 years later.

Biography

Gärtner was from Schweidnitz, Lower Silesia (now Świdnica, Poland). He enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1940 at age 19, and fought in the North African Campaign with the Afrika Korps. He was captured by Allied troops in Tunis in 1943 and was taken to the United States as a prisoner of war.

At the end of the war, Gärtner was terrified at the thought of being repatriated to his hometown, which was now occupied by the Soviet Union, and decided to escape. Several weeks after the war's end, he escaped from his prison camp in Deming, New Mexico, on September 22, 1945. After crawling under two gates, he jumped aboard a passing freight train whose schedule he had calculated. The train took him to California.

He moved between various towns on the US West Coast, working as a lumberjack, dishwasher, or laborer. Having studied English as an officer candidate, he perfected his command of the language, created a new identity as Dennis F. Whiles, obtained a Social Security card in that name, and invented a biography in which he had been raised in an orphanage after his parents had been killed in a traffic accident. He eventually settled in Norden, California, where he worked as a ski instructor in the winter and in construction and sales jobs during the summer. While attending a YMCA dance, he met Jean Clarke, and the couple married in 1964. He adopted her two children from a previous marriage.

Following his escape, the US Army launched a search for him, which it did not discontinue until 1963. The FBI issued wanted posters for him in 1947. According to his book, a ski expedition was formed to rescue the City of San Francisco, a train stranded in a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada in January 1952, immediately after which Life magazine took his and the group's picture. Meanwhile, FBI wanted posters for him were in most post offices. For 40 years Gärtner was listed as one of the FBI's most wanted persons. However, since the authorities correctly surmised his reason for escaping, to avoid repatriation as opposed to a violent goal such as seeking revenge for Germany's defeat, he was not designated "Dangerous," which would have resulted in a more intense manhunt.

Gärtner eventually moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked as a construction estimator and architectural consultant, and as retirement approached, relocated to Hawaii. Although he led a quiet life, his wife became increasingly frightened by his blatant refusal to discuss his past. In 1984, after she was about to leave him, he confessed his past to her. At her urging, he went public the following year. He contacted history professor Arnold Krammer, a well-known authority on the history of the 371,000 German POWs held in the United States during World War II. Together they published Hitler's Last Soldier in America (1985). He also appeared on the Today Show, where he "surrendered" to Bryant Gumbel. He effectively became the last World War II German prisoner of war in America.

When Gärtner went public, the government was bewildered about what to charge him regarding his escape. Gärtner was not an illegal immigrant, since he had been brought to the United States against his will. He had not really escaped from prison because all German POWs were to be repatriated to their original homes and he was due to be sent back to his hometown in Silesia, which had been occupied by the Soviets. Moreover, as he had escaped after the war had ended, there was some question of whether he was still a prisoner of war. Because of this, he was not charged with any offenses. The FBI announced that it had no further interest in him, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service confirmed it had no interest in deporting him. Gärtner was invited to become a U.S. citizen. Due to bureaucratic delays, it was not until November 2009 that he was finally naturalized as a citizen in South Denver.

Gärtner continued living in Boulder. After he went public, he was able to visit Germany again. While he was there, his wife Jean filed for divorce.

Gärtner died in Loveland, Colorado in 2013.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Hitler has upwards of one hundred million soldiers running rampant in the US as we speak.

[captain queeg]

2. There was an ex German soldier, I believe his name was Frank Gable, running a ski shop in Bellingham

Many years ago. I used to rent ski equipment there. He wrote a short book that I read part of. The thing I remembered was a story from the Russian front. He and three other soldiers were sheltering in a shack, an artillery shell hit and killed everyone but him. I didn’t read how he ended up settling in America but I know a lot of POWs were impressed with the US and ended up settling here.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Didn't a lot of those POWs get sent to pick apples around Yakima and Wenatchee? NT

[captain queeg]

4. I hadn't heard that but wouldn't be surprised.

They were generally happy to be POWs here. Well fed and got to see Hollywood movies in camp. Better than the lives they’d been living.

I read about one incident, and I don’t remember where the camp was, that an American guard machine gunned a few of them.

[kentuck]

5. I knew someone who was captured in North Africa as part of that Corps...

.....and was imprisoned at Fort Carson during the war, where he learned to speak English.

He went back to Germany after the war and then came back to Colorado and made millions of dollars building condos at ski slopes in places like Vail.

His name was Karl Finzel. He passed away in 2013.

He was quite a memorable character. He gave tours of his beautiful yard down in the Broadmoor area of Colorado Springs.

[NBachers]

6. I spent years in Miami working for a German vet who'd been in prison camp on the Eastern Front and

lost all his hair due to the cold. He was able to move to the USA in the mid-50's through some church sponsorship in Minnesota.

Having come up through the German trade schools, he was the best foreman I ever had. He maintained a strong worker-oriented Socialist outlook.

He said he owed his life to the African-American soldiers who kept him alive in the camp by smuggling food to him. He made damn sure they were well-represented in our work crews.

Hardest working guy on the job.

[DarthDem]

7. Utterly Fascinating

I knew none of that. Thanks.

[flotsam]

8. New Hampshire held 300 German POWs in Camp Stark

in Coos County. The prisoners cut firewood and tended their own gardens. After the war several stayed and more returned to the area.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NPY9V4L/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

[yortsed snacilbuper]

9. My childhood friend's Dad was traveling through Germany from Russia,

the Germans drafted him into the Wehrmacht, after the war he continued his trip and became a coal miner in Pennsylvania!